Tactical Tears

If you’ve been tuning in lately (I use this term loosly since I haven’t been blogging), you know that we had a major SNAFU with the design of the addition. The master bedroom had no place for a bed. I screamed, I cried, I howled. I stomped my feet. I bugged the contractor, who finally said, “just do a change order to the permit.” Oh, well if it’s just that easy, we’ll do that. So Dave calls the plans checker who approved our plans and he said, “no can do.” Apparently, because we were adding a measly 50 square feet, we would have to send the plans around to all of the agencies that originally checked them to get approval ALL OVER AGAIN. This was completely unacceptable news. So, on Monday, I took my little drawing of what we wanted to do (we didn’t have the revised plans back from the designer at that point) and I showed the only plans checker that we haven’t worked with, what I wanted to do. He said, and I will forever be grateful to him for this, that the project changes were so minuscule, that even though we were adding square footage, he would be willing to do the changes over the counter, once I had the revised plans.

So on Thursday, I took the day off of work, took my piles and piles of plans and paperwork to the county and waited for the plans checker. Unfortunately, he was indisposed doing a three-hour plans check with someone designing a large project. The first woman I talked to, who is like the triage nurse at the hospital told me, I would need to send the plans around to all of the agencies who originally checked it. I said that is NOT the message I got from that guy at the other counter, on Monday. She said, well that’s just the way it is. I made it clear that this was unacceptable and we were about to have conflict, so she, being somewhat intelligent, called for a plans checker and bailed. When Sean, the Plans Checker showed up, he looked wary. Not weary. Wary. Sean was the guy who took the brunt of my irritation when after eight months, our plans had not only not been approved but when I called to see what was going on with them i was told no one know where they were and there was no one they could call to find them. If you know me, you can imagine how well I took that. If you don’t know me, I’ll tell you I did not take that well. I called for the head of Building Services only to find he was on indefinite leave and probably would not be coming back. Gee, I can’t imagine why. His secretary, who appeared to be the only person who didn’t have their head firmly implanted in their colon, found the first available person to fix my problem. That was Sean.

I showed Sean my plans and he immediately said that we had to send the plans around to all of the agencies that originally looked at them. It would take about a month. I told him that is not what that guy at the counter, right over there, told me on Monday. He said, that’ the policy because we’re adding square footage. At that moment, I realized, I was going to have to do something drastic, if I wanted to get this construction show on the road. Sean had seen my wrath and was prepared for it. He had that look, he knew what was coming and I knew there was only thing I could do that might get me what I wanted. I had a split second to make the decide how to handle this situation…so I started crying. If you’re a woman, you may already know that there are few things that make men (most of them anyway) as uncomfortable as a woman crying, out of desperation. I let my eyes well up, I sniffed and I launched into a single run on sentence of woes. I told him we were going to be homeless, the project had already taken so long, the kids needed bedrooms, we can’t do the interior until the addition is approved, *sniff* there are cats and dogs and goats who will also be homeless, had he ever been homeless, he knew this was not my fault we got screwed by the process…Sean, who was prepared for anger, had no idea what to do with this and that, was exactly my plan. Tactical tears. They work every time. The key is not deploying them more than necessary.

Sean looked at me with panic. “OK, let me jut call the fire department and make sure they’re OK with this. if they don’t care, I’ll just issue the permit,” he said. *Sniff* Smile. “That sounds good.” Sean did an excellent job of talking down the scope of the project. The fire department briefly made noises like they might care and then decided that they did in fact, no give a damn about our piddly little, under 500 square food addition. Thus, the change order was issued.

Because I have been so apathetic towards blogging lately, this story is old. Weeks old. So old that not only are we well into construction, we have already run out of money and are waiting for the next allotment. It looks great We have also realized there are several things that are wrong on the plans. Things we requested but are not quite right. Like the bathroom windows that are supposed to be 4 ft by 4 ft, are listed on the plans and 2 x 2 and 1 x 3. Huh? yeah, that’s not going to acceptable. And two of the doors are the wrong size on the plans. I suspect I’m going to have to cry some more to fix this problem.